Beetle burning

Part of this job is doing controlled burns, both for the general health of the forest, and to destroy the pine bark beetle.  We started this job in August of last year, and since that time the weather has been consistently wet, and we have not been able to learn how to burn...until now.

Things have finally started to dry out, and G decided that we can start to do some of the burning maintenance jobs.  Last night, for our maiden voyage, we went out and burned five spots that had been cleared because they were infested with the pine bark beetle.  We took the afternoon off, and late in the day hooked up and filled the water trailer, and put all the fire setting and fire fighting equipment in the truck.  The guys had an early dinner, and around 5PM we set out for one of the larger beetle patches.  

We burn late in the day because we want the fire to be controllable, and late in the day the wind tends to die, the humidity goes up, and the temperature goes down.  Plus, when it gets dark, it is easier to see sparks that may blow out of the fire into surrounding areas.  Tom and I were the only ones not experienced with controlled burns, and the crew immediately started their jobs with some picking up fire starting torches, and others filling the water backpacks.  They spread out along the already cleared fire line, and started the fires.  They figured out where to start them based the breeze and the area that had been cleared, and very quickly had the area burning.  Everybody walked around until the fire had burned well towards the middle and there was very little chance of it jumping out of the planned burn area.

When the first fire was under control, we moved to a different beetle spot and burned that.  By this time it was completely dark, and it was easy to see which way the fire would head.  The second site was smaller, and it only took about 45 minutes to burn the area until the fire was contained.

The third, fourth, and fifth areas we burned were areas where Jose had pushed all the downed trees into windrows with the bulldozer in the middle of the cleared areas.  These were relatively easy burns, since we just had to light up the windrows and get them burning, and very little perimeter maintenance was needed.  We deemed the last one safe at around 9PM, and headed back to the farm.

The weather is still favorable for fires, so tonight we are going to do our first compartment burn.  The property is divided into 200-300 acre compartments, with compartment boundaries defined by either roads/fire lines or natural waterways.  Tonight's planned burn has roads on two sides, and a creek on the third.  It should be interesting...photos to follow!

Bush bridge building pictures

Here are some pictures of Tom and the guys building a bush bridge.  The only non-jungle material they used was some old zinc that had been pulled off of one of the roofs because it was full of holes.  I think the pictures are pretty self explanatory with Tom's comments, but let us know if you have any questions.

Three primary support logs from a tree cut just next to this location - so no transportation or milling overhead.

Pushing the fourth main support into position with the bulldozer.

Cutting the fourth support to length prior to lifting it into place with the tractor.

Yes, even Tom can work like the rest of the guys sometimes.  Adjusting the fourth support.

Adjusting another main support.

Measuring to make sure we are within jungle variances.

Starting the first layer of cross stick for driving deck support.

First layer of driving deck in place, time for scrap metal roofing to prevent dirt from washing through the bridge.

Metal layer in place.

Another layer of stick in the next direction.  Yes, we keep changing direction on each layer for more support.

Cover with dirt.....

....and more dirt so vehicles can drive across smoothly.

Bulldozer on top of bridge.

As you can see, the bulldozer can cross safely without falling through!  Yes, always a worry when creating "bush" structures.

Bridge done by the best crew!  Great job, team!

Only 1.5 days to complete the job!

...and more field work

Tom and I have both managed to stay busy outside for the past couple of weeks.  I spent the better part of a week seemingly meandering through the pine forest behind Angel, continuing to map the beetle spots.  Tulio deployed the whole crew to chop the perimeters of each and every spot, and then assigned Angel to be my guide.  I had all of the previously identified spots tagged on my GPS map, Tulio had shown a few more to Angel, and between us we plotted a route to hit all of them, and then walked the edges.  We found that the GPS didn't work so well in the very small spots, so we ended up skipping some of the three or four tree sites, and we merged a few of the close-together smaller sites.  We also cut a few spots short when we would have had to risk our lives to climb down a cliff to incorporate a stump into our map, and I could only wonder who had balanced on the side of the cliff to cut the infected tree down in the first place.  Many of the spots are on steep hills going down into jungly creek bottoms, so we spent a lot of time carefully making our way over very rough terrain.  Angel was quite patient about waiting for me, and even going at my slow pace I found that I was exhausted at the end of the day, and was in bed and asleep by 7:30, and not awake and waiting for the alarm at 6am the next day.  I thought I was pretty fit, but this project was an endurance test...but now it's done, and we just have to put the GPSed lines into the mapping program to see how many acres are affected.

I also learned to drive the farm's tractor so I could bush hog the horse pastures.  They were bush hogged just before we brought the horses up last July, and with all the rain we have had since then, we haven't been able to get out there to clean them up until now.  There were a lot if weedy sticky things that the horses don't eat that needed to be knocked down, so I spent two afternoons driving in circles and cleaning up the pastures.  Now we can see the horses even when they have their heads down grazing, and we can see Kismet when she runs out to round them up.  Now we need just a little more rain so the new grass can grow.

Tom has been busy in a variety of small projects, with the most fun probably being putting in a bush bridge on one of the crossover roads.  The bridge washed out in the October floods, and we have been working on bigger projects, but it was this bridge's turn since the two concrete approach bridges are fixed.  The smaller bridge is really more work than the bigger bridges, which only really required gravel and fill to be dumped on the approach, and then running over the fill to pack it down.  For this smaller bridge, the old bridge had to be pulled out which involved a lot of digging, and then big logs need to be set into the banks before sticks, roofing, and fill are placed on top.  It's a lot of work, but with a crew of seven plus Tom, it's a two-day project.

Field work

My lack of blogging, or online interaction in general, has been due to being very busy out of the house and away from the computer, not from not doing anything.  I have been continuing the beetle project, and have made a first pass through all the data and forwarded it to G to incorporate into his maps and beetle data base.  In addition, I have been working on getting the area of all the affected spots, which entails walking around each area with a GPS, and forwarding the track to G so he can use his software to get the exact area.  The spots range from just a few trees to large tracts of 25 acres or so, and so far I have been very impressed with Dave and Tulio's rough guesses, which have been pretty close to the actual areas I've walked.  I've walked most if the easily walkable spots, and after spending 1.5 hours traversing .5 miles of beetle border the other day, through tiger bush and deep jungle, over fallen pine trees, and up and down cliffs (really!), I am now at the point where I am going to take one of the guys with me to chop the trail, or perhaps to just climb through the really gnarly parts on his own with the GPS and meet me at the other side.  Tulio also has all of the guys chopping borders around some of the chopped beetle spots so they can burn them if the rain has really stopped, so some of those borders will be easier for me to map.  One way or the other, over the next couple of weeks, I hope to have a real measurement of how many acres have been damaged by the animal, aka the beetle.

While I have been hacking my way up and down mountains through deep jungle, Tom has been facing another challenge...learning to operate the bull dozer!  The British Army needed to get their men, equipment, and trucks out to Baldy Beacon, and knowing the roads were in bad shape, they contacted us for help.  On Saturday, Jose drove the bull out to the road where BATSUB would pass, and on Sunday, G and Tom went out to fix, flatten, and reshape the road so it was passable by the military trucks.  As training, G let Tom figure out what to do...

...and Tom knocked some bank into the road so he had material to fill up the mucky spots, and then proceeded to try to flatten it.  At one point he had three or four Mennonite pickups backed up waiting to pass, so G stepped in to help until they were through, but Tom kept at it and by the time the military went through, they all made it, no problem.  Tom went back to clean up on Tuesday, and between Tom and Jose, the road is now in decent shape, so with any luck the British military will be able to get out in a few weeks.  And, Tom is getting more comfortable with the bull!

At this point in our lives/careers, we never thought Tom would be driving a bulldozer and I would be hacking my way through the jungle with a machete, but we can't think of any place we would rather be!